


Welcome to the Jungle

by Freezeurbrain



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Aka I change the movie and make it gay, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Everyone Is Gay, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/F, Jumanji AU, M/M, Movie: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017), bow down to me the queen of obscure aus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:42:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22377403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Freezeurbrain/pseuds/Freezeurbrain
Summary: Connor Murphy has been missing for a year. No one knows what happened to him, but the last thing he did was plug in an old game called Jumanji.Alana Beck, Jared Kleinman, Evan Hansen, and Zoe Murphy are in Saturday detention when they find an old video game while cleaning out the basement of the school. With nothing else to do, they decide to plug it in and start it up. Suddenly, the four teens find themselves trapped in a hostile video game environment, with only two objectives- complete the game, and survive while doing so.
Relationships: Alana Beck & Evan Hansen & Jared Kleinman & Connor Murphy & Zoe Murphy, Alana Beck/Zoe Murphy, Evan Hansen/Jared Kleinman
Comments: 12
Kudos: 36





	Welcome to the Jungle

Ms. Heather Duke tried to mind her own business. She really did. When you worked at an antique store in a small town, you were bound to run into crazy characters every now and then. Heather didn’t care- she was just working here to make money over the summer. So it really wasn’t much of her concern if Mrs. Jones came in for the fifth time that week and bought another ceramic cat- maybe she liked having a bunch of cat statues stacked along her fireplace mantle. She turned a blind eye when Mr. Carmody entered every week, looking for a piece of wooden furniture that he could refurbish and sell at the local farmer’s market. Good on him for having a hobby. So when a man entered the store on a Friday afternoon, just a few minutes before Heather could clock out for the day, Heather didn’t pay him much mind. Sure, he was a bit younger than the store’s usual crowd of sixty-five-and-up retirees, but she wasn’t judging. 

The man was inside the store for less than ten minutes. He seemed to be browsing the selection of items on a long wooden table against the back wall of the tiny shop, the table that had a neon pink sign that read, in big, bold letters, **Everything $5 And Under**. AKA, all the stuff that didn’t warrant a large price tag sat on that table. The man seemed to hover over a particular item that Heather couldn’t see, as if contemplating. After a minute or two of pondering, he picked up the object and made his way over to the front counter.  
“Do you take Visa?” 

Heather nodded. “Yep.” 

The man took out a blue Visa credit card and placed it on top of the item he wanted to purchase, which he then placed on the counter. Heather took the card off the item in order to scan it, and that was when she saw what this man was planning to buy. It appeared to be a wooden box, with a layer of dust on top that suggested it had been there for quite some time. The man had brushed some of the dust off, leaving a trail of clean wood cutting through the dust that was wide enough to read a single word engraved on the lid- _Jumanji_. Beneath that, in smaller script, Heather could read the words _A game for those who seek to find a way to leave the world behind_. As she examined the box, she could have sworn she heard something... like the sound of drums beating rhythmically. The sounds stopped as soon as they started, however. 

_Weird_. Heather never remembered seeing a game called Jumanji in the store before. However, the thought didn’t last very long. Maybe her boss had just picked it up and she hadn’t seen it yet. Or she could have simply missed it. Games didn’t just appear out of thin air, after all. As for the drums, she chalked that up to her mind, tired from nearly five hours of work. 

As Heather scanned the card and waited for the message to show her whether it was approved or declined, she glanced down at the lid of the box again. “Board game?” 

“Yeah.” The man nodded. 

Heather looked back at the screen, which flashed an _Approved_. “Do you want a receipt?” 

“No thank you.” The man took his card back when Heather handed it to him and grabbed the box off the counter. “Have a nice day.”

“You too.” Heather nodded, smiling slightly as the man walked out of the shop. 

To Ms. Heather Duke, when the man called Larry Murphy bought an old copy of the board game Jumanji for five dollars, it was just another customer buying just another item in the store. Mr. Larry Murphy just thought he was buying an old board game that he could play with his family. Neither of them had any reason to think that it was anything more than that. So the blame really didn’t lie with either of them in this situation. Neither of them could have known of this game, of the powers awakening deep inside the box as Larry Murphy put it in the passenger seat of his car and resumed his usual evening commute home.

There were a thousand other people who could have bought Jumanji. It was by sheer unluckiness that Larry Murphy happened to be the one who purchased it. 

Larry arrived home a little after five thirty. He got out, taking the box with him, and locked the doors of his car- just as he always did. He fished the house key out of his pants pocket and unlocked the door, being sure to lock it again when he stepped inside- just as he always did. He entered the kitchen, where his wife Cynthia was almost done making dinner, and he set the box down on the kitchen counter.

“What’s that?” Cynthia’s eyes went from the Moroccan vegetable stew she had been stirring to the mysterious, dusty box her husband had just placed on her clean counters. 

“Remember that game Jumanji?” Larry took a plastic cup from a drawer and walked over to the fridge. 

Cynthia thought about it for a moment as she continued to stir the stew. “The name sounds familiar.” 

“It was a board game when I was a kid. There was this huge thing about it for a few months- you know, every kid just _had_ to have that game. And then, all of the sudden, it seemed to disappear. No one talked about it anymore.” Larry poured himself a glass of water. “And then I saw that in the old antique shop by the laundry place.”

“And you wanted to see what all the hype was about?” Cynthia asked. 

Larry nodded. “We could make a family game night out of it. It’d be nice to not have Connor holed up in his room every once in a while.” 

“The kids aren’t gonna want to play some dusty old game that was around when their parents were kids.” Cynthia laughed half-heartedly. “Especially Connor.”

“You don’t know that.” Larry said, despite the fact that Cynthia was pretty sure she knew that. 

Cynthia didn’t start an argument. She knew better than that. “If you want to go ask him, be my guest.” 

“I think I will.” Larry grabbed the box and started up the stairs, passing family photos that captured various points in time. His daughter Zoe’s door was open, and he could see her playing around with her phone as he passed her room and knocked on the door of his son Connor’s room instead. Unlike Zoe’s room, Connor’s room was pretty much always shut tight.

“Connor?” Larry called. 

There was no response. Larry tried the doorknob and found it unlocked, so he opened the door and let himself in. 

He found his son sitting on his bed, wearing an oversized black hoodie, jeans, and huge over-the-ear headphones playing music so loud that Larry could hear it. Connor looked up as Larry entered, wearing the same “I-couldn’t-care-less-if-I-tried” expression he always seemed to wear nowadays, no matter how much Larry tried to get through it. “Hey, kiddo.”

With a sigh, almost as if it was an inconvenience, Connor removed his headphones. “What?”

“I found something. You gotta check this out.” 

Connor took the wooden box Larry handed him, reading the lid with a bored stare. “ _Jumanji_?” 

“It’s a board game.” Larry gestured to the box, hoping that something about it would pique his son’s interest. However, Connor’s bored, irritated expression remained. 

“Who even plays board games anymore?”

Larry sighed. Sometimes he wondered why he even bothered with this kid... it seemed like no matter what, Connor refused to accept Larry’s attempts at reaching out. “Well, why don’t you at least look at it first? If you like it, maybe we can give it a try after dinner. Sound good?”

Connor’s only response was to scoff and pull his earphones back up. Knowing the conversation was over, Larry left, shutting the door behind him. 

As the rock song he was listening to faded out, something caught Connor’s eye. There was a weird green glow coming from the box, leaking out from the thin openings. Connor pulled his earphones down again, furrowing his brow at the wooden box. With a cautious hand, he reached out and pried open the lid. The ancient hinges squealed painfully- they clearly hadn’t been used in several years. A miniature cloud of dust caused Connor to cough, but when it settled, he had to blink all the same. 

_What the hell?_

The only thing inside the box was a game disk. 

It didn’t make sense. His dad had called this a board game, but if that was true, where was the board? Where were the game pieces? Why was there only a silver game disk reading _Jumanji_? 

And why would someone go through all the trouble of putting only a disk in such a large box? 

Connor had to figure this out. Standing up off his bed for the first time in hours, he grabbed his laptop off his desk and booted it up. 

No one in the Murphy household saw the cracking green light coming out from under Connor’s bedroom door. No one heard the rhythmic drumbeats, the screeching birds, or the trumpeting elephants. No one noticed the headphones that fell to the floor, still playing a song, with no one left to hear them. 

When it was time for dinner, Zoe went to her brother’s room to tell him to come downstairs. She heard his music, but he wasn’t opening the door. Frustrated, she tried the doorknob- it was unlocked. 

Zoe Murphy opened the door to find her brother’s room exactly as it should have been, except for one glaring detail. 

Her brother was nowhere to be seen.

The Murphys called the police, but it was no use. There was no sign of Connor anywhere. It was as if he had simply vanished from his room, leaving only an open laptop displaying the title screen of a game called Jumanji and a blinking _START_ button.


End file.
